A RARE PRONK CISTERN AND COVER

CIRCA 1738-40

Details

A RARE PRONK CISTERN AND COVER
Circa 1738-40
Painted in a Chinese Imari palette with the 'Hand-Washing' as designed by the Dutch artist Cornelis Pronk for the VOC, showing on each side two elegant Chinoiserie ladies rinsing their hands with water from a basin borne by a boyservant, all in loose Chinese robes and with underglaze blue hair drawn up in topknots, above them a fantastic bird flys by and in the grasses at their feet is curled a serpent, on the sides large cobalt blue and gilt trees bearing a profusion of large blooms and berries, all framed by formal trellis pattern borders in shades of iron-red, underglaze blue and gilt, repeated on the domed cover centering a Japanese replacement knop, the front fitted with a gilt bronze spigot
20½in. (52.1cm.) high

Lot Essay

Like the other known Pronk designs, this scene seems to be drawn entirely from the artist's imagination, with a wholly Chinoiserie rendering based loosely on images he had no doubt seen on Chinese porcelains in Holland. The scene's basin, shaped like the kind of large Kraak piece loved by the Dutch, echoes the basin seen in Pronk's 'Doctor's Visit' pattern, as do the borders, the snake and grasses below and even the bird above. The 'Hand Washing' seems to have made only in these magnificent urns, in blue and white and famille rose as well as in a Chinese Imari palette. See C.J.A. Jorg, Catalogue, Pronk Porcelain, pp.32-4. See also Howard & Ayers. op. cit., pp. 292-5, for a blue and white example from the Mottahedeh collection. A slightly larger Chinese Imari version was sold Christie's London, 6 November 1995, lot 27. A famille rose example was sold Sotheby's London, 19 June 2002, lot 137

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